The Slime Pits

Version 0.16: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The amorphous realm of acids, jellies and slimes. Any trace of intelligent beings has long been dissolved. Still, there are rumours of great treasures deep down, hidden safely away in secret chambers without door or window for acid to leak in.

The Slime Pits are six levels deep and contain the slimy rune. The entry is between Lair:6 and Lair:8.

An entrance to the amorphous realm of acids, jellies and slimes.

The Slime Pits are a 6-floor branch full of amorphous horrors. Four guaranteed treasure vaults, a large amount of experience, and the slimy rune of Zot await anyone able to find their way to the bottom of the Slime Pits, but its difficulty and unique challenges make it dangerous for all but the best prepared characters. Stairs to the Slime Pits can be found between floors 6 and 8 of the Lair.

Layout

Superficially, the Slime Pits closely resemble the Orcish Mines: each floor is either a single large irregular chamber or several smaller chambers connected only by stairs. Like the Orcish Mines, you can use a wand of digging to connect separate chambers together, easing travel. Bear in mind, however, that the walls of the Slime Pits are actually harmful to touch; every time you end a turn adjacent to a wall (even diagonally), you take a small amount of acid damage. Running through long, narrow hallways results in significant exposure to this damage. You can make your own 3-tile-wide hallways to be safe, but whether or not it's worth the time and wand charges is up to you.

Useful Info

Entering the Slime Pits unprepared can be an extremely costly mistake for low-level characters. Acidic monsters such as brown oozes, acid blobs, and death oozes can inflict immense damage and will rapidly corrode your equipment, while shining eyes will induce numerous character-ruining bad mutations. It is much safer to explore here after acquiring:

A source of mutation resistance (an amulet of resist mutation, worshiping Zin, playing a halfling or undead character, the lajatang of Order).
A source of acid resistance (any source of corrosion resistance will also provide this, as will playing a yellow draconian).
A source of corrosion resistance (cloak of preservation, amulet of resist corrosion, various artifacts) or a full set of corrosion resistant gear (enchanted to +5 or higher, or artifact gear).

Prior to the nerfing of acid (specifically, its ability to permanently erode your equipment) venturing into the slime pits without a means of resist corrosion was virtually a death sentence (at the very least, for your weapons and armor). With corrosion damage now a transient and reversible effect, getting by without it, while still an increased risk, is a much more manageable affair. As such, the need to frequently swap between rCorr and rMut amulets has been greatly reduced, and one can spend much, or (if necessary) their entire time maintaining a resistance to the still-perpetual problem of malmutate. While the above are the only major intrinsics, the following also come in handy:

Cold resistance for azure jellies
Clarity or high magic resistance for golden eyes
An amulet of stasis or high magic resistance for giant eyeballs and great orbs of eyes

The Slime Pits contain many traps (teleportation, shafts, Zot) that can leave you in a monster-filled dead end or next to a searing acid wall. It's strongly recommended you save this branch until you are at a high level to give you the best chance of detecting traps beforehand.

The wide open floors and caustic walls make it impossible to effectively bottleneck opponents; expect to be swarmed by slime creatures and worse if you rush in too quickly. Fortunately, almost every monster here is mindless and silent, making it easy to creep forward, attract the attention of a single opponent, and lure it back a safe distance before killing it in privacy. When possible, limit yourself to quiet spells unless you feel confident about reliably nuking herds of jellies.

Exploration of the Slime Pits will turn up very little apart from monsters and traps. There is no loot to be found outside of the boss' chambers, and only one unique is capable of spawning here (Dissolution, a deadly jelly priest who should be killed as quickly as possible to avoid his Summon Eyeballs spell). There is no random food lying around, and no monsters here leave edible corpses, but hopefully you won't be spending enough time here to get hungry anyway.

One thing to keep in mind about the monsters you find in Slime is that few possess resistances other than poison or acid, and even fewer have any AC or EV worth mentioning. The lack of EV means that low-accuracy, high-damage spells such as Iron Shot, Crystal Spear, or the various bolt spells are highly effective, while the lack of AC can make spells such as Airstrike or Lee's Rapid Deconstruction (but not Shatter!) quite effective. Bolt of Inaccuracy or Explosive Bolt are both wonderful in Slime if you have the appropriate rods and the Evocations skill to use them.

Slime: 6

The sixth and final floor of the Slime Pits is an open chamber with a large, non-corrosive stone structure in the middle, made from four quarter-circle vaults. The floor is populated with eyes and jellies like the floors above, but in the center of the structure you'll encounter the boss of the Slime Pits, the royal jelly (see its article for advice on defeating it). Once TRJ is dead, the walls of the central structure will become transparent rock, and you can either teleport in, dig through, or use Passwall. Alternatively, you can use a high-powered Lee's Rapid Deconstruction or Shatter to tear down the walls before fighting the boss, but this will be noisy enough to alert everything on the floor. In any case, be aware that many of the enemies here will eat the contents of the vaults if they gain access to them, and that if you wait too long, slimes may spawn inside the vaults naturally (fortunately, the rune and any artifacts cannot be eaten).

Alternatively, you can avoid all of this conflict by worshiping Jiyva, the god of slimes. Doing so will render all monsters in the Slime Pits neutral to you, and at high enough piety, the vaults turn to transparent rock.

Monsters

G Giant eyeball	G Golden eye	G Eye of draining	G Shining eye	G Eye of devastation	G Great orb of eyes
J Ooze	J Jelly	J Pulsating lump	J Slime creature	J Brown ooze	J Death ooze
J Azure jelly	J Acid blob